Time’s up for the Yes2Rail blog, which I launched on June 30, 2008 as a paid consultant on Honolulu's elevated rail project. Yes2Rail’s August 13, 2012 post was its last following the author's move to Sacramento, CA. You’re invited to read four-plus years of information-packed entries, many of which are linked at our “aggregation site.” Look for the paragraph with red copy in the right-hand column, below. Mahalo for all the positive comments Yes2Rail received since its start.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

To Rail or Not to Rail –
that's the question, and Oahu residents will hear it incessantly for the next
two months.

The two pro-rail mayoral
candidates – Mayor Peter Carlisle and former Managing Director Kirk Caldwell –
took the gloves off this week and began punching away at anti-rail Ben
Cayetano’s bus rapid transit plan.

Mr. Cayetano has been slow
to reveal details of his BRT scheme, but he finally included a few tidbits in his
Sunday Star-Advertiser commentary – just enough to activate his two opponents.
Their one-two Thursday punch forced Mr. Cayetano into a corner for the first
time this campaign season, and that’s likely to be repeated in the weeks leading
up to the August 11 primary election.

To be sure, onlookers won’t be lacking for between-round entertainment. Civil Beat today has an item about KHON2’s unscientific on-line poll that asks readers which transit plan they
favor and the Cayetano campaign website’s advice to supporters that they “clear
your ‘cookies’ from your internet settings and vote a few times.” That dubious tactic may be working; as of this Yes2Rail posting, support for Mr Carlisle's pro-rail plan has slipped from 50% to 46.5%. Mr. Caldwell's approach to building rail is at 35.3%, and Mr.
Cayetano's no-rail plan is sitting at a remarkably low 17.0%!

Radio Redux

Our first deconstruction of
anti-rail UH Professor Randy Roth’s comments on a morning talk
show this week said we’d get around to pro-rail attorney Bill Meheula’s
comments on another day, and today’s the day.

Mr. Meheula is representing
an intervener in the anti-rail federal lawsuit, and he summarized his client’s
views on rail during the radio program.

Mr. Meheula:…the people
that live out in West Oahu are suffering a lot from really bad traffic. And
there are a lot of people there. You’re talking about 60-plus percent of the
people on Oahu live within this corridor and suffer from this traffic.

In addition to that, 70
percent of the growth in the next 20 years is gonna be out on the west side,
most in Kapolei and central Oahu. A large percentage of these people are middle
or lower income minority groups, and they’re wasting a lot of time on the road
– time that kids could use studying, exercising, parenting…. It’s unfair to allow them to continue
to suffer like this. I live in east Oahu..., and we don’t suffer like that.

My second point is that we
need a non-car and a non-bus solution, and why is that? If you have enhanced
buses or you have (high-occupancy vehicle lanes), even then, the same arterials
are leading to them, either H-1 or H-3…, and when they come to town on the same
arterials, it’s not really gonna improve traffic….

In addition to that you have
a real practical problem in that the surtax approved by the Legislature (to
fund rail construction) that does not allow use of those funds to improve
highways or improve the current bus transit system. So you don’t have a means
to pay for (enhanced buses), and another thing is (to combat urban sprawl).
That’s one of the beauties of the rail project – allowing development in
Kakaako and along the rail, as opposed to continuing to take good country
agricultural land for more urban sprawl.

And then my last point is a
practical one: If this project fails, it’s not likely that Senator Inouye will
be able to get this kind of money again. We have two reasons. We have an
election coming up, and if the Senate goes Republican, he’s no longer going to
be chairman of the Appropriations Committee, he’ll no longer be on the
Transportation Committee, and if (rail) stalls, even if the Senate stays Democrat,
how long do you think it’s gonna take for the FTA to authorize a project like
this….?

Scare Tactics

We can’t let the week end
without taking note again of Professor Roth’s comments as we did Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday. Today we examine his rather bizarre notion that at-grade
buses are safer than elevated rail.

Professor Roth:During rush
hour on the trains, if they’re full as supporters say they will be, 80 percent
will be standing. It’s not as comfortable as buses. It’s not as fast as buses.
It’s not as safe as buses. On the
trains, there’s no driver. You get on. Hopefully there’s not gonna be somebody
there who’s threatening or is obnoxious or what have you. It doesn’t happen
often, but with a bus, you’ve got a trained person there to deal with a situation
like that. For a lot of different reasons, you just don’t need the train. On
this bus rapid transit thing and managed lanes, as I mentioned, 30 different
cities.

We think it’s also bizarre when a
law school professor resorts to scare tactics to support his notion that buses
are safer than an elevated rail system, as Honolulu’s will be.

The photographs in our
right-hand column are evidence of at-grade transit’s vulnerability to crashes.
The top photo shows what happened when a Honolulu bus narrowly missed
pedestrians near Kawaiahao Church and smashed into a rock wall. The photograph
at right shows the aftermath of driver error in Houston, and as recently as
February 2012, a 66-year-old man was killed when run over by a bus in Honolulu.
Buses are safer than trains? Please, Professor Roth. Your first-year law
students wouldn’t let that argument slide by in one of your lectures.

And about those 30 different
cities on the mainland that you say have implemented managed lanes: Most of
those cities built rail systems long ago, and their users wouldn’t dream of getting along
without them – even though they sometimes have to stand up during part of their commute, heaven forbid!

1 comment:

Roy Kamisato
said...

As I understand it the trains will have no drivers but will have trained attendants on board. To the point of at grade mass transit. Every single one of them will be removing existing car lanes in downtown Honolulu which automatically increases traffic congestion. The alternative of course is to knock down buildings for blocks to make room for at-grade-mass transit. This however still does not lessen the threat of being run over by an at-grade bus for train.

This Isn't Political

Yes2Rail is a blog about the Honolulu rail transit project, which has become the key issue in this year’s mayoral race. We comment on the candidates’ plans to address Oahu’s growing congestion problem and whether those plans could meet the need as well as elevated rail can and will. That’s not the same as criticizing the candidates, and we urge our readers to recognize the difference.

Another red-light runner meets Denver at-grade train, 6.13.12

Honolulu rail will be elevated, with zero possibility for accidents like those shown in this column in cities with at-grade systems. Visit our "aggregation site" for much more on why elevated rail is the only reasonable way to build Honolulu rail.

What riding the train will avoid

Bus Accident Aftermath on H-1

'Black Tuesday'--9/5/06 Crash Produced Nightmare Commute

Typical H-1 Traffic

About Me

After five years of active-duty service as an Army officer with duty stations in West Berlin and South Vietnam, reported and edited for newspapers and broadcast stations (including all-news radio) in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Honolulu. Covered Honolulu city government for the Honolulu Advertiser and KGMB-TV. Served on Congressman Cec Heftel's staff in Honolulu and Washington, then managed corporate communications and was Hawaiian Electric Company's spokesman for nearly a decade. A communications consultant for 19 years before moving to California in 2012. Launched, produced and hosted Hawaii Public Radio's "live" weekly "Energy Futures" public affairs program in 2009-10. Authored books on The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific ("Punchbowl" 1982) and on the decline of standard grammar in business and society ("Me and Him Are Killing English!" 2007). Now an information officer with the California Department of Water Resources.